Feature - Where school lunch is an education lifeline

A daily lunch of boiled maize and beans, is not much of a meal to some, but across sub-Saharan Africa, it has become a lifeline for millions of vulnerable children. At a cost of just about nine US cents per child, such meals have proved nutritious to about 1.1 million children in Kenyan schools, improving their health and concentration. Launched in 1980 by the government, with assistance from the UN world Food Programme (WFP), Kenya's school-feeding programme covers 29 arid and semiarid districts and two urban slum areas. Indeed, there is no shortage of examples in Kenya of what a difference such a simple school lunch can make in the life of a poor child. One such was Paul Tergat, Kenya's internationally famous athlete, who recently scooped the world Marathon record in Berlin, Germany. Tergat's busy schedule takes him each year to several high-profile athletic events around the world. But born and raised in Baringo, one of Kenya's poorest districts, his life could have been a very different story today. "A local school-feeding project was critical in helping me grow up to become the healthy, literate person I am today," says Tergat. A recent visit to Tergat's home district sheds light on poverty in Kenya's arid and semiarid districts, where the school-feeding programme has become a lifeline for school children. ABSOLUTE POVERTY With up to 80 percent of Kenya classified as arid or semiarid, chronic food insecurity is widespread in the country, particularly among the nomadic pastoralist communities who occupy most of the harsh dry-lands. Moreover, periodic droughts and floods add an acute dimension to food insecurity and ensure that most of these people remain among the poorest in Kenya. Situated in western Kenya, much of Baringo is in the lowlands, too dry for any meaningful agricultural production. For much of the year, the local population survive on wild fruit, which is boiled for up to 12 hours to rid it of poison, before it becomes edible. In such a harsh environment, going to school is always a luxury. Children have to walk long distances to school every day, with little to eat. By the time they reach the school, their energy levels are so low they can hardly read. GOOD PERFORMANCE Yet Baringo has over the last five years been ranked among the 10 best-performing districts of Kenya's more than 50 districts. William Kerario, the Baringo district commissioner, says this performance has only been possible by virtue of the school-feeding programme. "The school-feeding programme is the lifeline to education in Baringo District, without which most of the schools would close. It has really improved enrolment over the years," Kerario told journalists who recently visited the district. Education officials say the school lunch has not only improved enrolment in the district but also boosted completion rates in primary schools. Between 1997 and 2000, for example, the district registered an overall increase in enrolment rates by about 4,000 pupils. Children also have tended to start schooling earlier, before they reach the required enrolment age, in order to benefit from the feeding programme, they say. In Nginyang, one of the divisions of Baringo District, residents interviewed - from the youngest to the oldest - were emphatic that education would collapse if the school-feeding programme were to be stopped in the area. If the food stopped coming, they said, all the children would eventually stop attending school. They would instead roam around in the bush looking for wild fruits to eat, since food was the only motivation for walking long distances to school. Nginyang primary school, one of the best-performing schools in the district, with 671 pupils, is situated around a community which moves from place to place in search of pasture and water for their animals. The school was in May this year displaced by floods and is now housed in the local village polytechnic. This has not, however, served to detract from its performance, with some of its former students having been admitted to prestigious national secondary schools and universities. Between 1998 and 2003, the number of children completing their final year of primary education at the school rose from 11 to 64. Moses, a former pupil of the school, is now studying clinical medicine at a local university. "Any place with food attracts people. Most of the children are here because of the food. If it were not for the food, I would now be in the jungle," Moses told IRIN. "We know that you cannot depend of this food forever. But for now, it is the only hope for education in this place. It will change the attitudes and give the local people purchasing power." IMPROVED PARTICIPATION Teachers say they observe high levels of attentiveness and participation among pupils in class when they receive lunch at school, since most bring little or no food from home. Mark Lomarino, the Nginyang school head teacher, believes there would be no school in Nginyang had it not been for the school lunch. "All these good performances in the last five years were as a result of food. To us, this food is life. Children are not dropping out because of food. Children are never absent," he explains. "The school lunch is our milking cow, and we expect the cow to live long enough." According to Samuel Nyadow, a teacher at Chesirimion, another primary school in the district, many children even save some of their lunch and take it home to their parents. "We are dealing with children who have very little food in their homes. Coming to school is a means of getting food," he says. "When the food comes late in some months, there is a lot of absenteeism. When we don't have food here, they move to another school," he adds. The teachers themselves are affected by the deep poverty here. Linah Simat, another teacher at the school, says teachers are often forced to absorb some of the bright pupils in their homes, in order to keep them from dropping out of school. "There is no difference between us and the people around. We live with the people, so we have to share with them," she says. "It is frustrating to teach a child who thinks you have eaten a lot yourself," she adds. SHORT-LIVED This programme could, however, be short-lived, and thousands of vulnerable children risk dropping out of school due to an unprecedented funding hitch. WFP says it urgently requires food worth US $15.4 million in order to maintain the programme at its current level, or it will be forced to scale down 80 percent of the operation. Tesema Negash, WFP's country director for Kenya, said that without the funding the agency would be forced to discontinue its programme in January, with devastating consequences for children in some 4,000 primary schools in these food-insecure regions. Only about 350,000 out of 1.1 million children, might continue to benefit from the programme. The possible curtailment of the school-feeding programme, would not only let down more than a million children and families reliant on the one meal a day for their children but might also turn out to be a major blow to the country's progress made since the government's Free Primary Education policy was launched this year. With schools sparsely distributed, taking away the school lunch basically would not only take away the children's incentive to walk long distances to class and induce dropouts but also discourage enrolment. Kurgat Yelokum, a fourth grade pupil at Nginyang primary school, says that without the school lunch he would have to stop running the 15 km from home to school altogether. His parents, with their four other children, have only one goat, on which they depend on for milk. Yelokum is hoping to become a politician when he grows up. But this will only be achievable if the lunch - the only meal he receives each day - continues. "I don't get any food at home. If there is no food, I can't read. I feel very hungry. I think the food should be increased in school so we can read better," he says. According to Francis Keiru, the national coordinator of the school-feeding programme, the Kenyan government has already factored its pledge of $21 million into its budget, as part of its contribution to the programme for the next five years. Urging other donors to chip in, Keiru said the programme was a key element in the country's ability to meet its Millennium Goal of achieving universal education by the year 2020. "Our plea to other donors is to continue supporting us, or we will be jeopardising our Millennium Goal on education," he said. "No single district is lagging. If anyone is not going to school, it is because of retrogressive cultural practices. I don't know where education would be in these districts if the school-feeding programme was not there," he added. Rebecca Kapkoyo, 60, says all her six children are employed in Kenya's major towns, and only because of the daily lunch they received at school. "My children are educated. They passed their exams and now have good jobs," she says. She asks: "Where will the future leaders come from if they stop the food? You see the terrain, it is really difficult to grow anything here."